Archive for the ‘two-door hardtops’ tag

Yeah, this 1960 De Soto Fireflite two-door hardtop for sale on Hemmings.com is gonna need some elbow grease and a little bit of time to get into solid and presentable shape – unless there’s some new “utterly unrestored, beyond Driveable Dream” aesthetic we’re not yet aware of and that somebody’s going for with this car. That said, though, it’s stored indoors, it appears to be complete save for a couple parts, and the seller is rather straightforward with the major work needs to be done, including new trunk channels and maybe a new trunk lid. From the seller’s description:

The car is mostly complete, with known missing items the air cleaner and the rear back up lights. The floorboards and trunk floor have been repaired with sheet metal so you may want to do additional work on them. There are new seat covers and some extra material for door panels, etc. I believe the car has the original engine and drivetrain. The edge of the trunk lid and the channel of the rear deck under the trunk lid are rusted through so a new trunk lid may be in order, and repairs will need to be made to the rear panel. I have a lead for someone that has a parts car with a good rear panel. The engine does turn over easily with a bnattery and using the car starter with key. I didn’t get it to fire, but suspect it just needs some troubleshooting of the ignition system to get it running. The side trim for the car is in the trunk and also the special roof trim for the DeSoto. I have a set of used hubcaps that I got for the car.

Before we get into the car, I’d like to point out that the ad for this 1955 Chrysler C-300 for sale on Hemmings.com is the type of ad that sells cars: lengthy description, illustrative and good-sized photos, and a short video that shows the car running and gives a quick walkaround. As for the car itself, it may look a little rough, but it’s also a solid and complete car, which makes it a pretty good foundation for a project car. From the seller’s description:

one of 1725 made, and one of 299 currently known to exist.

Prior to my acquiring it, this car sat untouched for 26 years awaiting restoration in central Colorado. Before that, it was a Utah car for all of its life, and was last registered in Moab.

The majority of C-300s were white, but this car is an original Tango Red car – the rarest production color – that received a cheap white respray sometime in the 1960′s or 70′s.

This car is a remarkable find due to how complete and original it is. Naturally, a car this old which has been sitting this long needs a complete restoration, and this car is no exception. However – finding one this complete, correct, and un-violated to restore is not typically possible anymore.

Some highlights: * VIN tag and data plate present and matching. Scheduled build date June 11, 1955. * Engine compartment is very close to “as-delivered,” i.e. numbers-matching and date-coded * Correct, original 300 block, stamped 3NE552580 * Original “555″ heads, adjustable rockers, and original, gold, dimpled, 300-only covers * Original dual Carter 2317S WCFBs with dated tags, original lines, linkage and filters * Original, unrusted and undented batwing air cleaner * Original 300-only master cylinder and booster * Original, dated 1541641 radiator * Original dated Autolite EB4006 fuel pump, 1343231 generator, 1604480 starter, 1658989 distributor, etc. * All firewall markings and inspection stampings are well-preserved * All 300-only features are in place. 150 mph speedometer. Tan leather (front seat appears to have been recovered). Unique front and rear bumperettes. Turn signals. HD suspension, etc. * All trim and emblems are present and in fair-to-excellent shape. Pot metal pieces are very nice and show their dry western origins. The grille fascia “CHRYSLER” lettering is not shown on the car in all pictures, but I do have a nice set that goes with. * Many parts were replaced in order to get the car to run and drive (detailed further below). In the event a nut, bolt, hose or line was replaced, the old part was also saved when possible. This includes fuel lines, brake lines, distributor parts, fuel tank, starter, relays, regulators, etc.

I spent a couple of months going through the cars’ major systems to make sure that it is a sound platform for restoration. This process entailed partially restoring some items, and fully restoring others – while ignoring some altogether. The result is a car that runs and drives, albeit not one that you could take very far; my goal was not to make a driver, but to make sure the major systems were sound, i.e. no cracked blocks, heads, fragged transmissions, warped/oversize drums, etc. Again, the highlights:

- Engine: Carbs completely overhauled and blueprinted. New plugs, tube seals, OE-style plug wires, filters, belts and fluids. New Airtex fuel pump, regulated down to 3psi. ’56 gas tank thoroughly cleaned and installed with new hoses. Ignition converted to 12v with Pertronix pickup and coil; ’56 12v relays and regulator used along with freshly rebuilt ’56 12v starter. Generator professionally overhauled. New reproduction MoPar Gel battery. Engine wiring shorn-up only as necessary. Minimal exhaust system installed. Result: Engine starts, runs, and idles well with very little smoke, but shows little compression. There are no cracks or leaks, but needs to be rebuilt.

- Transmission: The transmission was drained (fluid was red), replacement OEM drain plug fitted, and then re-filled. Result: It shifts into all gears and operates as it should, but leaks at the front input seal.

- Brakes: With the exception of the booster and a couple of the hard lines, the brakes were completely overhauled. The master was cleaned, inspected, and reassembled. Each wheel cylinder was cleaned, honed, and seals replaced. The original drums showed very little runout; they were tanked, blasted, turned, and individually fitted to beautifully relined shoes by the last such craftsman in Colorado. Many hard lines and all rubber lines replaced. Result: The car stops, but needs booster repaired and break-in time on shoes.

- Cooling: System left alone. Water pump is working and not leaking. The radiator fins are remarkably straight. There is a small leak at driver’s side bottom that did not affect my ability to run the car.

Bodywise, this is overall a dry western car, but it does have rot in its lowers. The wheel lips are very nice, as are doors, door seams, hood, trunk, roof, valances, inner fenders, grille fascia, cowl and firewall. However the outer rockers, lower quarters, trunk dropoffs and fender doglegs will all need rust repair, as will small portions of the trunk and floor in the usual spots. It’s not a rustbucket by any means, but does need isolated rust repair – just less than most. The perfect example of this is the fenders, which are perfectly solid except for one area of the dogleg, and at that one isolated area they are totally rotten. The lower quarters are rough, but again – it is isolated. Otherwise, there is evidence on the passenger’s door having been dented at one time, and some bondo in front of the wheel wheels. Grille fascia panel is dented up but not severely. There is no evidence of significant crash damage ever, or panel replacement.

Glass is good / very good, but not show quality… no cracks. Interior is complete and correct. Horn ring broken. I have not tried any of the electrical accessories; they were disconnected as not to overload them with extra voltage.

Finding restoration parts for this Twin-H-powered 1955 Hudson Wasp Hollywood two-door hardtop for sale on Hemmings.com has to be a giant pain in the rear, but it doesn’t look like there’s much to address on the car, which has been treated to a refurbished interior, appears to be mechanically in order, and presumably has seen a repaint and rechrome in recent years. From the seller’s description:

Originally a Texas car, this is vehicle is totally rust free and is in great condition inside and out. The paint is outstanding and the chrome and trim sparkle, including the original air conditioning trim pieces on the side. The only cosmetic issues are: headliner has stain area in rear right passenger side. We contemplated replacing the headliner but it appears original and overall is in very good condition so we left it as is There’s a little wear in headliner around the center knob about dash.. The door panels are all in excellent condition, except the plastic underside to the arm rest are cracked on two of them (this is the old style 1950s plastic that was brittle or would expand/contrast with heat). The dashboard and original “alligator” padded dash top are in great condition, including the pull out “drawer” glove box. The floor carpets are likely not original but they are in fine shape and look period. The seat upholstery backs are original, but the seats–front and back–were replaced with new fabric in 2011 (no one is reproducing Hudson fabric for this year/model–not even SMS–so we matched as best we could. The original vinyl was used though–so it’s only the fabric in the seats that was redone). The understuffing in the seats was redone underneath.

Has rare factory continental kit. Trunk has lining and is clean as a whistle. Rubber is very good overall, though there is at least one spot where it’s a bit aged but there are not leaks or issues. Carbeurator was rebuilt in 2011 and engine was tuned up so that it runs great now. Rare original factory air–blows but not ice cold. Interior is largely original and in excellent condition.

Like old dogs in the pound, half-finished project cars typically need some sort of saving grace to be rescued: a really low price point or a really desirable car to begin with. This 1962 Dodge Polara 500 two-door hardtop for sale on Hemmings.com has a couple, starting with the fact that it’s never left New Mexico, which means there’s likely little to no rust under it. Nor has it ever left the seller’s family, so it has an unusually large amount of documentation for a project car, and the seller seems to have ensured that it really is all there. From the seller’s description:

It was running before I started to restore it, but the front suspension rubber control arm bushings are dry rotted. I pulled the motor out and all the engine components, It’s is ready for the fire wall to be painted and install all the suspension rubber and hard Parts. I will include the complete new suspension kit, all new upper and lower ball joints, tie rods etc. including all new polyurethane bushings. I also have spare tail lamps and housings.

It’s as close as you can get to complete car. No major parts missing, with the exception of a few emblems. All the parts from the engine compartment are sorted, bagged and tagged in the trunk. The grille is in the back seat, headlights and grill trim also bagged and stored in the trunk. I removed them as not to damage them while working in the engine compartment. The engine block and transmission are inside my garage.

The Car will need a complete restoration. It was my Mom’s car, purchased in 63 by my dad who was an employee of the dealership. She never liked to drive, as a child, I never saw her drive it. My dad drove it once in a while as a manager he was always provided a demo car to drive My older brother used it for a short time after coming back from the Vietnam War. My parents gave it to my younger brother. I purchased it in the early 80,s from him. It broke down on him and he damaged the front bumper towing it home, It was a simple loose lead in the distributor. He did not like it and said it used to much gas. I drove it intermittently in the 80,s and then it sat till I started a restore a few years ago, but became ill and don’t have the ability to restore it. I would love to see this rare car restored, it’s time to sell. I have the original bill of sale and all the paperwork and original keys going back to 1964 when my dad bought it. This car has never left New Mexico.

Note: I write up driving impressions of virtually every car I photograph within a couple of days of the drive, so everything is fresh in my memory. Occasionally, because of the constraints of the story’s format, the prepared text doesn’t run. Now, thanks to the joys of the blogosphere, it can. This week, we reached back in our archives to January 2008, when we ran a 1958 De Soto Firesweep in Hemmings Classic Car.

Look out the windshield, and see the hood rising in the middle, tapering nicely. It points the way ahead. Ingress/egress is easier here than in some other cars of the era we’ve tried – traditionally we smash our knees on something while winding our girth behind the wheel, but there was no such case here. (At least, not initially.) The bench seat, part-vinyl with cloth seating areas, is admirably grippy – supposedly this is base trim, but it’s pretty sharp for something that’s supposed to be on the “economic” end of the scale. The pedestal mirror, as ever, manages to show little behind you and take up rather a lot of room where you’d rather be seeing traffic.

The speedometer employs a drum rather than a ribbon. The angle of the red slash leaves a question, however: Is it the top or the bottom of the angle that we read to sort our speed? The difference between 75 and 80, on a California freeway, might be the difference between safe passage to your destination and a set of wigwags in your mirror as the local revenue-generators pay for their day out of the office.

In any case, the face of the dash seems surprisingly flat, lacking the 3D depth of Mopar instrument panels just a couple of years later: Wiper and cigarette-lighter knobs jut out, but the face itself, from the clear speedo cover to the metal trim, feels very two-dimensional. The clock, off toward the center of the dash, is too far away to do the driver any good, but the pods containing oil, amp, fuel and temp gauges, proper gauges mercifully, jut out like Playboy fantasies. In pictures they’re not so massive, and they’re a bit low, but considering the sheer cliff face of the rest of the dash, they seem very in-your-face.

Twist the key in the dash, and as the engine alights, the sound of the starter disengaging grinds loudly enough that it obliterates all other noises emanating from under the hood. Once it trails away, what’s left is a grinding whirr – or maybe it’s more of a whirring grind. That’ll be the idle, then – vaguely agricultural but not to the point where it feels like it wants to shake itself apart.
We drive with the AllState free-standing air conditioning unit on the driveshaft hump. It is sufficiently wide, straddling the transmission hump, that we have a hard time getting our right leg over to the gas pedal, thus negating the charm of its mere presence.

Press the shift button – there, next to your left hand as you grab the wheel at the proper 9-and-3 position – and it takes a second for it to clunk into gear. Acceleration is gentle and smooth on the uptake, if noisy: The De Soto 350 is a roary little thing, which, properly channeled, could be mistaken for spunk, but in a two-plus-ton full-size sedan is an ever-present reminder that you were too cheap to tick the next box for a less-stressed powerplant.

The manual steering, which we suspected coming in would be leaden and lifeless, in fact offers surprising response, has only about 10 degrees of slack in the wheel, and doesn’t require Franco Columbu-sized (or even Big E Langston-sized) arms to wrangle it into position at low speeds. (It’s not a fan of re-centering itself post-turn, however, and offers no assistance righting itself once the curve is behind you.) Happily, the wide whitewall radials on the wire wheels offer plenty of bite in turns, meaning that you can lean over quite a bit in the corners (and you do, even at 30 MPH it feels like one degree of lean for every mile-per-hour with which you attack the turn) but still not lose grip.

We would be remiss if we didn’t say something about the brakes: The day of the photo shoot, the front drums weren’t feeling particularly well. In truth, even a halfway-down press of the manual drums was enough to send a shudder through the entire car, shaking the instrument panel and steering column, making us wish we’d planned better and simply coasted down instead. Clearly this isn’t representative of the line, and is restricted to the example we drove.

Even so, Forward Look De Sotos are few and far between these days, and those that see road duty instead of being squirreled away in museums are more unusual still. More the pity.